Shave the Moon!

"I believe the nation
should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on
the moon, shaving it, and returning him safely to Earth."

President John F Kennedy

With those words, delivered to congress on the 25th May 1961, JFK launched one of the
most ambitious and fantastical endeavours in human history, finally realising a dream that
has been with us ever since ancient man first looked up at the night sky and wondered what
the big glowing round thing was.

A big ball of cheese hanging in the sky

Our attitude towards our nearest neighbour in space
may have differed from century to century, and from culture to culture - to many it has
been an all-powerful deity to be worshipped and honoured, to others an unattainable
paradise, to some a big ball of cheese hanging in the sky (although opinion is divided
over whether anyone ever actually believed this) - but the one thing that unites us all is
the desire to reach out and touch our mystical lunar cousin.

Science and technology have, of course, come on in leaps and bounds, and we are now
able to dismiss all those old legends and myths and say for certain that the Moon is made
out of asbestos and covered with a thick layer of coarse, wiry hair.

Arthur C
Clarke, who knew a lot about this sort of stuff, quite correctly pointed out that if
we ever wanted to colonise the Moon we would first have to embark upon an extensive
campaign of deforestation. This was something that the early pioneers at NASA were
not slow to realise when they first set about turning President Kennedy's promise into a
reality.

The twin sciences of rocketry and shaving

Luckily the timing was just right. In the late fifties and early sixties, huge
advances had been made in the twin sciences of rocketry and shaving, and those initial
test runs with high-altitude razors were extremely encouraging. But of course, there
are significant differences between trimming a moustache at twenty-thousand feet, and
shaving a whole planet. Even if it is a relatively small one.

The most obvious distinction is a matter of scale. NASA technicians calculated
that in order to complete the task they would need a razor blade over twelve hundred feet
in length. This blade would need to be forged from steel strong enough shave the
entire surface of the Moon without buckling, light enough to be carried into orbit aboard
a conventional rocket, and sturdy enough to survive multiple meteorite strikes without
shattering.

Initially, several such blades were planned, in case the first was
unable to complete its mission without giving the Moon razor burn. But then
astronomers revealed some good news, in the shape of a newly-discovered asteroid, which
could be used as an emergency whetstone in case the space razor became blunted.

And
so a launch date was set. The rocket was ready. The razor was ready. The
eyes of the world were watching, but there was still one more problem to be overcome.

Fragrant

Whilst the space razor was being completed, a second team was struggling to come up
with a suitable shaving foam delivery system. The foam was to be vital to the
success of the project, as without it the razor ran the risk of becoming snagged on
craters, or even snapping completely on some of the taller crags.

Several major
brands of shaving foam had already been tried, but had been judged inadequate after being
used to shave test patches in the Nevada desert. Eventually, technicians managed to find
one that was up to the job: it was effective, cheap enough to produce in great quantities,
and had a pleasant musky aroma which would leave the moon smelling fragrant and feeling
refreshed.

They now faced the problem of how to deliver it to the target area. Primary
experimentation investigated methods of firing it at the Moon from the surface of the
Earth using giant, strategically-placed space cannons. This idea was rapidly
abandoned, for two reasons.

Firstly, they couldn't guarantee the integrity of the
'foam stream' over such a long distance, and feared it would diffuse in the vacuum of
space and end up coating other planets, such as Mars or Jupiter. There were also
suggestions that some might spill onto the surface of the sun, resulting in widespread
environmental damage, and ruining everybody's holidays.

Experimental test firing

Secondly, the unpredictability of weather conditions here on Earth could cause the foam
to go astray. This possibility became a reality when sudden wind changes during an
experimental test firing caused two hundred thousand gallons of shaving foam to drift over
the North American city of Jamestown. The city was buried for three days before
fire-fighters managed to get the foam under control. The tragedy left two hundred
people seriously damp, and thirty more unaccounted for.

This event prompted engineers to consider an orbital delivery system. Work on a
giant, three hundred metre tall deep space aerosol can was halted after it was realised
that the idea was mental.

Instead, development began on a system of smaller satellites, which
were designed to be manoeuvred into orbit around the Moon and programmed to deliver their
payload at a given signal. This work, however, was both costly and time consuming,
and caused considerable delay. Launch windows came and went whilst the space razor
rusted in its hangar.

Panic

Meanwhile, someone else had designs on the Moon. The Russians had not been idle
and in 1968 they launched their own test probe, which successfully used depilatory cream
to remove hair from a three mile wide square on the dark side of the Moon.

The news
caused panic at NASA, who realised that they could not afford to wait any longer.
The space razor was clearly a non-starter, and so they had to fall back on their secondary
plan - a manned mission to the Moon, by astronauts equipped with lawn mowers.

But what would be the best sort of mower to use on the lunar surface? Experts
pondered over this question for weeks, and specialist astro-gardeners were brought in to
consider all the options.

Electric mowers would require heavy fuel cells, which
would take up valuable space in the lunar module. Using the old-fashioned, manual
'push-pull' sort of mower would solve that problem - and it would leave a nice stripy
pattern on the Moon's surface - but it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect two men to
shave the whole of the Moon using this method.

Keen gardeners

Eventually, a solution was decided upon and in 1969 Apollo 11, it's three man crew and
two lawnmowers blasted off to the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, both being
keen gardeners, had been selected to go down onto the surface and do the mowing, whilst
the other one who no one remembers would remain in orbit in the command capsule and let
them know if they'd missed any bits.

That was the theory, anyhow.

There has been much discussion over the years about exactly what went wrong. No
doubt, whoever was responsible for providing the astronauts with hover mowers believed
that they would soon make short work of the task in hand, but in retrospect we can
question the wisdom of sending equipment that works by floating on a cushion of air to a
place with no atmosphere.

When the astronauts returned they were given a hero's
welcome, but in fact their mission had been a failure.

Hirsute

Subsequent attempts to tackle our hirsute neighbour, carried out in the shadow of this
defeat, fared little better. For the Apollo 12 mission, scythes were used to reduce
a small area of the Oceanus Procellarum to stubble, but astronomers reported that it
quickly grew back again.

For the Apollo 13 mission, NASA used a specially converted
combine harvester, but an accident en route meant that they had to jettison the cab and
drift back home in the bailer.

The remaining missions saw a shift away from cutting,
and towards waxing, but the results were no more impressive. When the Apollo
programme was finally discontinued there was a terrible atmosphere of defeat.
Despite all the money and ingenuity that had been poured into the project, the Moon was
still as hairy as it had ever been. NASA's efforts had been in vain, and all it had
to show for itself was a bunch of rocks.

Apathy or derision

Since then, the whole notion of shaving the Moon has been more or less forgotten
about. Ideas are occasionally put forward, but are usually met with apathy or
derision. In the late eighties, for example, it was suggested that laser technology
developed for the Strategic Defense Initiative could be used to burn bald patches on the
surface of the Moon, but the scheme was rapidly dismissed as unfeasible.

And
perhaps that's just as well. Perhaps it is better to leave the Moon as it is -
hairy. After all that we've done to our own planet, perhaps it's better that we make
sure that we've learnt from our mistakes before we go tampering with another.

Maybe at some point in the future, when we're more careful and more responsible, we
will finally return to the Moon. Recently a Japanese electronics company has
suggested that nanotechnology may provide the answer. Thousands of microscopic
robots armed with tiny tweezers could pluck the Moon bare in a matter of weeks.

The
technology is a long way off at the moment, but not so far that we can't see the
possibilities. Who knows, maybe one day in the future our children's children may be
the first to look up into the night sky and see a hairless Moon? Now that's
something to think about, isn't it?